Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Muhammad and the Movies

I am expected to condemn violence
and incitement to violence. But I have a problem with chicken and egg scenarios
because they represent an insoluble conundrum. What came first?

I have read the Koran on more
than one occasion and each time it made me itch.It is a blue print for conquest, it invites
the faithful to commit violence and murder against Christians and Jews, and it
is the personification of intolerance.

It scares me like no other book I
have ever read.

Page one is an act of supplication
and affirmation; page two an affirmation of intolerance and exclusion; by page
three we, the disbelievers, are warned and then threatened and by page four the
faithful are averred the right to kill those that disbelieve.Murder as an act of faith is justified in
four pages and there are many hundreds more pages through which we must wade to
the bitter end. Much of the account is poetic and none of it is time specific.
And here is the problem.

The Bible was written over many
centuries but it ends, depending upon your faith, at the latest, by the end of
the second century of the Common Era.Few people believe in either the literal meaning of the first or second
Testament (The Torah or the Christian Bible).But the Koran is not time specific so then, as now, in the sixth century
of the Common Era and in the 21st Century of the Common Era the
narrative and its instructions are neither changed because of circumstances nor
alterable for the passage of time. The enemy is the same enemy, destined for
turning, or designed for death.

Does this mean that we in the
civilised West should keep to our principles and condemn that which offends
them as we would expect them to condemn that which offends us?It was after all Hillel who in the first century
before the Common Era proclaimed as the
article of Jewish faith, "do not do unto others that which you would not have
them do unto you".

When the followers of the Prophet
Muhammad will stone the fundamentalist who rapes the child (because it is not
his right to take a bride for the sole reason that she is able to menstruate);
and will bludgeon to death the cartoonist drawing caricatures of Jewish apes
and Christians pigs (because anthropomorphic representations are the way the
Koran depicts us in order to ridicule us); and when the burners of Churches and
the bombers of Buddha’s are hanged from the tallest of Cranes (and the Episcopal
Church demands a boycott of the makers of the cranes), then perhaps we may
share our experience of existential pain and discover a collective humanity
that demands a mutuality of respect.

But while in Pakistan a
developmentally disabled child can be falsely accused of blasphemy as a pretext
to the ethnic cleansing of all Christians in the neighbourhood; and while in
Dubai (and throughout the rest of the Arab world) human slavery is alive and
well because we are all of us inferior and unworthy of anything but penance for
the crime of our birth, then please, do not demand of me a respect that you are
incapable of reciprocating.

And when the Imams that spew hate
from their pulpits with every breath proclaim that we have no right to protest
their evil words because they are the words of their god Allah and the writings
of the Koran, his writings as delivered by his most holy servant, the Prophet
Muhammad, then please do not ask me to condemn a movie that portrays the
Prophet in a less than friendly way.

Duplicity demands conditional
tolerance, but peace will accompany a narrative that is sincere because from it will emerge
mutual respect.

1 comment:

Wow, read the Koran eh, very impressive. On your topic I reckon most people forgive the fruit loop factor in a religion because it's there in every religion. The Muslim fruit loop factor however involves two sleights of hand. The Muslims are a political movement as much as a religion just like the Jews are a nation as much as a religion. Criticism of some Muslim political action become disrespect for the Holy Koran. Against stoning women! Disrespect. Against segregated swimming pools, banning seeing eye dogs, clitorendectomy? More disrespect. It's a debating trick to frighten the other side. The other flim flam is the Western self induced one. Don't publish the cartoons because it's disrespectful or offensive sounds noble but I'd say it's fear. Appease the bully and hope he belts up someone else. Let's see how it goes for these geniuses, getting rid of the Jews from Europe & replacing them with Muslims. And loads of luck with that.